“The scribes and pharisees brought a woman along who had been caught committing adultery; and making her stand there in full view of everybody, they said to Jesus, ‘Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery, and Moses has ordered us in the Law to condemn women like this to death by stoning. What have you to say?’ They asked him this as a test, looking for something to use against him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. As they persisted with their question, he looked up and said, ‘If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Then he bent down and wrote on the ground again. When they heard this they went away one by one, beginning with the eldest, until Jesus was left alone with the woman, who remained standing there. He looked up and said, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go away, and don’t sin any more.’” – John 8:3-11
As I’ve spent time in this Scripture, I’ve been moved by this space where only the woman and Jesus are. She had been drug here by those who condemned her, but there’s something in this moment with Jesus in which all the people and their assaulting disapproval fade into the background and Jesus is inside the space with her. It changes the perspective, the weight of those voices, utterly. Now Jesus is the dominant reality, the closest person, the most substantial and truest presence. And he, the one whose presence in her space and her heart and her life is more real and meaningful and to be taken seriously—he is the one who says, “Neither do I condemn you.” He sees her, he loves her self when everyone else sees only how she has not lived as she should. He sees her. Jesus, who loves her when no one else did, who loves her even as he knows everything. One by one the other voices step away.
It’s a beautiful invitation to let him into our inner space, especially when we feel unaccepted, even when we feel unaccepted because we have done wrong. Because even then Jesus still sees what he loves in us. Even in our deepest shame, and especially there, his love enters and we find we would do anything at all to stay with him.
